5 Character Mashups I’m Dying To See In The Same Story

Five Character Mashups I’m Dying To See In The Same Story

by Limecello

Have you ever read a few books by different authors and thought “I wonder how these characters would interact with each other?” Many people have. That’s how we got Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Abe Lincoln, Vampire Hunter. (Which I’ve actually watched - twice.) Jasper Fforde has been doing something like this for ages, in a slightly different (more murderous) twist.

Two that pop into mind are Nalini Singh’s Psy-Changeling characters from Caressed By Ice, and Sarah J. Maas’s A Court of Thorns and Roses trilogy's main characters. I can just see Lucas, Hawke, Caspian, and Azriel getting along famously, with Morrigan and Amren to needle them. I think the changeling pranks would really go well with Rhysand’s inner circle, and the Pay would have really interesting ways to deal with other Fey problems and intrigue between the courts.

A really easy gimme would be Nalini Singh’s paranormal and contemporary characters meeting. I can see any of the Psy-Changeling characters, or even the Archangel characters, going to and enjoying a Schoolboy Choir concert. But what if the Archangel Characters or the Psy-Changeling ones had to go to the abyss? (Admit it: You either forgot about or didn’t know about Lord of the Abyss, which I highly recommend!) And while I love the boys (men!) of Schoolboy Choir and their ladyloves, I don’t think they’d love being in the paranormal world. Not even the rugby players in her Hard Play series.

I recently read the DarkGlass Mountain trilogy, beginning with The Serpent Bride, by Sara Douglass and am extremely angry about how open-ended the ending was, so that’s coloring everything. I wouldn’t mind if Ravenna was in ACOTAR too and got wiped out along the way. Basically, put her anywhere where she’s going to die. Throw her in Uprooted by Naomi Novik. Have you noticed in so many high fantasy books, even high fantasy romances, a ton of people die? Literally, in eight pages maybe 10,000 or more soldiers might die, and it’s not even a big deal.

As a total twist though, I think I’d really enjoy it if some badass characters, like ones from Larissa Ione’s Pleasure Unbound, or heck J.R. Ward’s brothers being thrown into, say, a cupcakery in Susan Mallery's A Kiss In The Snow. Imagine one of those guys having to play nice, bake, and run a store front in Mischief Bay. I’m chuckling as I write this. (I tried to picture them in a Harlequin Presents, but even I can’t stretch my imagination that far.)

Hockey romances are really popular now, but I'm specifically thinking of the See Jane Score from the Chinooks Hockey Team series by Rachel Gibson. I’m imagining Kresley Cole’s The Warlord Wants Forevercharacters, from her Immortals After Dark series, on a hockey team, and I don’t know. I don’t know that rules and teams are something they could handle, but if they had to, and you know there actually are authors currently writing paranormal hockey romances!

Any number of scholarly historical romance characters would be blown away by the tech and happenings at Cyclone, the company that centers Courtney Milan’s contemporary romances, like Trade Me. I think Miranda Neville’s characters from Confessions from an Arranged Marriagewould love it. (This would be a very friendly, happy mashup. No labs, stores or continents being destroyed in this case!)

Perhaps, I’m just amusing myself here, but imagine the trouble everyone could and would get into, the outrageous comments and insane fights — and through all that, I have to admit I’m still most amused by those paranormal individuals being forced to do mundane tasks. Just picture it: Wrath having to shape little fondant flowers, and Butch and Vishous right there with him, baking delicate petit fours, timing souffles. And trying to stop Rhage from eating anything. Admit it. You smiled.